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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Bus update, 2016!

It has been quite a while since I gave an update on the bus so I thought I'd share some of our latest and greatest news. We celebrated living in the bus for two full years last October. That means that Chris and I have lived in the bus together longer than *any* other house/apartment/shack/cardboard box, which is quite the milestone. We are still incredibly happy, making improvements all the time and love the freedom that comes with a such a mobile home. Sadly, our days living in the bus full time are numbered as we will be relocating for Chris' medical residency next June and it's unlikely it will be to a place where full time bus living (at least in our bus) is possible. We still plan to keep the bus as an RV and have a LOT of stuff planned between now and then, including an epic bus road trip! (more on that below)

Where are we going? I don't know! Ask me on March 18th, the mystical "match day" that medical schools force upon young almost-doctors. It's a day where they open an envelope that determines their future training location for the next 3-4 years. So where are we going? Please don't ask me, when I know, you'll know.

Upgrades!

To prepare for the epic road trip mentioned above, we got hitched! According to Chris, who did all hitch related research, we have a Curt 10k GWR with a 1000lb tongue weight, 1404 8 Class 4 receiver. It cost us about $200 and is held on by 6 enormous bolts. We'll use it to tow our a car for our upcoming road trip and to hold our bike rack for future trips. No more having to load bikes into the bus every time we move and we will be able to explore a little more easily when we get to our location, thanks to our "toad".

We added an additional shelf to the bedroom area over the windows on Chris' side of the bed. He put all his foldable clothes up there to make some room in the closet. It's much too messy right now for me to share a picture of the finished product, but I promise I will in the future.

In the bathroom we added two shelves to help contain our toiletries while we're driving. This way, when we take off they don't all go flying. Part of the bottom shelf still needs to be painted and mounted in place.

We also moved the couch to the driver side area of the front of the bus and mounted the bookshelf to the passenger side. I don't have any great pictures of that right now but plan to take some good ones once we're picked up and packed up for our big move. Which brings me to our next bit of news, we're moving! (yes, I know i said that earlier, no I don't know where we are ultimately moving to yet). Next weekend, we're relocating the bus back to my parent's yard for a month,where we did the initial conversion process. This is to do a really deep clean and finish up a lot of little projects so we can hit the road the last week of March for the Tiny House Conference!

Maintenance and Repairs

We had some minor issues with some of our appliances this year. The hot water heater got frogged up (as in, a frog got stuck in it and clogged it up pretty bad). We had to back flush it and it started working again. While putting it back together Chris tried to tighten a screw that controls the amount of gas that flows and it broke off, meaning we had to replace the entire gas/water valve. Even though our eccotemp L10 is still working, I'd never get another eccotemp product in the future. (see my past blog post on that here ).

Replacement gas/water valve

Also, our mini split AC stopped working last week. Luckily, we have an amazing HVAC company that we've worked with before and they came out and fixed a leak in the copper piping in the outdoor unit. Our HVAC guy, Richard, said this can sometime happen due to vibration between the pipes. He secured them in such a way to stop them from hitting each other and doesn't think we'll have any issues again for a while. He said our bus was the first he'd worked on and was impressed with our set up.

Fortunately our hot water heater stopped working when it was warm and our AC stopped working when it was cool out so we didn't suffer much. If anything, it made us more appreciative of these luxuries that many live happily without and also aware that we would survive without them (especially in Florida) as well.

Future Plans

After the Tiny House Conference we have to head back to Tampa for Chris' graduation at the end of April and then we're hitting the road for the aforementioned "epic road trip" for a month or two ultimately ending in our new city, NO I don't know where that is yet! March 18th people!

So, to recap. Lots of fun new stuff going on in our lives. The bus project will never be "done". Chris is nearly done with school, we're moving in June, we're not sure where yet and you should come see us at the Tiny House Conference or perhaps you'll see us on the road this summer!